Musings about converting clay to things people can use

Another bisque firing

The kiln is currently cooling down after another bisque firing. This load contains a set of lanterns, a set of dinner plates, a few mugs, a personal pie plate, and eight fish.

Also of note, this firing is the first with a new thermocouple offset programmed in. Hopefully this will get us closer to the right temperature. The kiln has consistently underfired the slow bisque program, and overfired the slow glaze program. Rob Battey of L&L Kilns provided the steps and values to change. It was very simple. Now, it’s just a matter of waiting for the kiln to cool so we can see the results in the witness cones.

Did I mention fish? I did. There are 8 fish in this firing. They were made in a copper jello mold and are destined for my backyard fence. I don’t usually go in for molded bits, but this was too easy and too goofy not to try. I’ll post photos of the final results.

Not in this load was the 10lb bowl I threw when Steve was here taking photos. It cracked in drying. To see why, I carefully cut it in half. I found that the bottom was too thin in relation to the area in the foot and above. It was about half the thickness of the surrounding body. It’s now rehydrating in a bucket, and will get to to take a ride in the kiln another day.

If all went well, and the monitoring software seems to think it did, I’ll be glazing and firing again Saturday . More on that when it’s finished.